Training Tech Talk: Tips for Creating Engaging Web Conferencing

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Creating engagement via Web conference is challenging even with small groups, and large groups can be almost prohibitively difficult to monitor. The ideal solution would recreate the natural engagement and interactivity of face-to-face instructor-led training (ILT) in a way that’s as easy, convenient, and accessible as Web conferencing. A handful of up-and-coming companies are introducing Web 3-D apps as a potential solution. They look similar to Second Life in certain basic ways, but are super-intuitive to use and are designed specifically for business use in terms of scalability, participant control, usability, and multi-screen, low-bandwidth content-sharing (a useful feature that ’2-D Web conferencing platforms don’t provide).

The best of these platforms have gone to great effort to recreate the essence of face-to-face communication, without a user learning curve, for better online learning. For example, they feature directional, actual-distance (but adjustable) sound, which studies indicate is crucial to the brain’s ability to quickly absorb information.

They also allow both learners and instructors to be in control of all the non-verbal communicators we semi-consciously use in-person that contribute to an engaging sense of presence. Instructors can tell by sight when learners are focused and engaged from anywhere inside the 3-D training room (and learners know it, so they’re naturally more engaged).

Collaboration flows more freely with more people participating and fewer people talking over one another or ‘checking out.’ Because they’re virtually sitting among their easily identifiable peers instead of alone in front of a 2-D Web conference, learners are more accountable for their presence, so they become more engaged in the course objectives. In essence, being in one of these Web 3-D environments ‘feels’ natural, so both training and learning become almost as naturally engaging as they are with in-person ILT.

- Kate Hendrick, director of marketing for VenueGen